If you're a starter on the electronic drums and you got the Roland FD-8 already coming in the bundle, it is ok to start with. But my advice is to get rid of it as soon as possible. The playability (in comparison to real HiHat-machines) and the quality of the trigger is pretty low.
I have to admit that not everything is poor, the noise emission is fantastic, there is pretty much no impact noise going into the floor, you can really play this controller at midnight and nobody will complain.
But in my eyes, the above mentioned downsides outweigh this advantage by far.
First off, you really have to kick the controller powerfully to make the trigger realize that there is a signal. In my experience, you can only play heel up cause you really have to press down the pedal "into the floor". Heel down is possible, but there will be a lot of misstriggers that you won't have with a real HiHat-machine.
And second, the whole controller works pretty spongy, it has a very unnatural feeling and kind of "wobbles around" while playing. There will be no benefit for your practice. And that is actually what electronic drums are made for (at least for the most part): practicing at home to implement these things on the acoustic drumkit later on. Not possible with this controller in my eyes.
I would always go for a real HiHat-machine!
